From memory chips to Bête Noire: The most powerful tech in Black Mirror history

The Thronglets are honestly up there


On Reddit, the Black Mirror fans are in the grips of a big debate: Is the pendant Verity uses in the season seven episode Bête Noire the most powerful bit of tech ever seen on the show? Think about it: as we see in the episode, she can literally do anything. She can play God however she wants with little to no consequences. So much so, that the pendant treads the line between magic and technology – and explores how that really, when push comes to shove, advanced technology and magic are the same thing. But what is the most powerful tech ever seen in Black Mirror? Here’s a rundown.

The altering in Men Against Fire

Whilst not the most well known episode of the show, it’s crazy (and terrifying) how much this tech can do and it’s arguably one of the most powerful in Black Mirror history. MASS enhances all five of the human senses, and allows soldiers to communicate, dull sense of smell and visual alter reality.

Any time the show put human consciousness in an object

Jon Hamm

Think how much tech you need to put an entire person’s thoughts and beings into the stuffed monkey from Black Museum, or the little personal assistant from White Christmas. Crazy advanced.

An AI generated dead person

In Be Right Back, powerful AI uses the social media posts and uploads of a dead person to create a version of them you can message and speak to on the phone. It then advances so far to create a full on synthetic replica of them. The tech this would take is definitely some of the most powerful in the show’s history.

Memory replay

Used in episodes like The Entire History of You and Crocodile, these kinds of technologies are so powerful that they could change legal issues forever whilst completely destroying privacy.

The San Junipero digital afterlife

This literally would have the power to let the world live forever. It could change everything on a global level. Religion, for example – the cause of much war and conflict – would have an afterlife that we could prove to be true.

The Thronglets development

In this season of Black Mirror, Plaything gave the show one of its most powerful and unexpected tech ever. A janky cancelled simulation game from the 90s morphed into tech so powerful that every electronic device in the world played the same sound as the Thronglets merged with humanity. That is insane.

But the most powerful IS Verity’s pendant

Verity’s pendant necklace in Bête Noir, however, is indeed the most powerful tech in the show’s history. I can’t see how the show can push it further than something that can bend the world to the user’s will without exception – literally playing god. So much so that fans of the show are divided on whether Black Mirror pushed it too far out of the realms of doable. But it was still a banger episode, let’s face it.

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